NISHA, KUMARISHARMA, BHAVYA2020-11-242020-11-242020-11https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810155649ABSTRACT Mushrooms are delicious, nutritious and consumed foods known as dietary and protein sources. Mushrooms are an important commodity worldwide. However, a thorough understanding of consumption trends is not yet available as the importance of edible mushrooms within consumer preferences and perceptions has not been studied that‟s why the need of the study was felt. The present study has been conducted with the purpose to understand the consumption behaviour, purchasing behaviour and non purchasing behaviour of mushroom in Solan town of Himachal Pradesh. The data has been collected using convenient sampling from 102 respondents .The primary data for this study has been collected with the help of structured questionnaire and descriptive statistics is applied to analyse the data/information. The findings of the study showed that mushroom vegetable is the only recipe which is consumed frequently or on regular basis by the respondents. For all the five listed class of mushroom recipe, the “most frequently” has received relatively lesser score, this indicates that apart from mushroom vegetable, other forms of mushroom recipes are not popular among people and frequency of mushroom consumption is also on the lower side. White button mushroom is the first preference of (81.37 per cent) of respondents followed by oyster mushrooms (11.76 per cent). The second preference was given the most to oyster mushroom (58.82 per cent) followed by other mushroom i.e Gucchi (15.69 per cent).. Shape and size is the first preference of (45.1 per cent) respondents while purchasing mushroom followed by price and colour and the second preference is given mostly to colour by (47.6 per cent) respondents. Good for health is the principal consideration opted by (64.71 % ) respondents for consuming mushroom followed by „to add variety to diet (38.24 per cent) and medicinal value (29.41 percent). The non purchasing behaviour of respondents highlights the non availability of fresh mushrooms in local market on regular basis. Education level had a significant positive association with the overall frequency of mushroom consumption. However, income had no significant influences on the frequency of mushroom consumption.EnglishThesis